Organizers are hoping for one big cake walk this Saturday morning in downtown McMinnville.
Caring Hearts United is holding A Cake Walk Round the Square with registration beginning at 8 a.m. Saturday. The cake walk is scheduled to start at 9 a.m.
“If there are 100 people, we are going to have 100 chairs,” said Dianne Sneed, who is organizing the event with Melinda Breedlove. “Everyone will walk to the music and when the music stops it’s time to grab a chair. Every chair will have a number and we’ll draw numbers each round to see who is eliminated.”
When contestants are eliminated, there will be a number drawn to see which of them wins a cake. Sneed said the contest will continue until there are 10 final contestants. They will be declared the grand prize winners and be eliminated one by one.
“We’d love to have 100, but we’d love to have more than that too,” said Sneed. “As a first-year event, it’s a shot in the dark. We don’t know what to expect, but we will have a lot of great cakes and prizes.”
In addition to the cake walk itself, Court Square will be a hotbed of activity with face painting, a dunking booth, an inflatable, cornhole, a fishing pond, and food vendors. Among the food vendors will be one serving cinnamon buns and coffee.
There is no set fee to participate in the cake walk. Sneed says it will be on a donation basis.
“This is a fundraiser and we need money because we’ve taken on five hospice units and been in contact with two more,” said Sneed. “We don’t deal directly with the patients. The hospice units contact us when there is a need. They might need Ensure or adult diapers and the patient doesn’t have the ability to pay.”
Caring Hearts United is preparing to deliver what it calls Happy Packets to hospice patients this Fourth of July. “It’s a box to let them know there are people thinking about them,” said Sneed.
When Caring Hearts United first started the Happy Packets in Christmas 2011, it delivered 30 boxes. That number has grown to 180 for this Fourth of July.
Caring Hearts United, a 501(c)3 organization, also gives gas cards to help families with the expense of traveling to and from their ailing relative.
Up to this point, Caring Hearts United is best known for it’s Wonderland of Trees event held at Three Star Mall in November. That’s an event planning to enter its third year.